No need to apologize, we all learn the different things

I went to wikipedia for you and here is what the requirements are...

1500 MHz Processor
512 MB RAM
9 GB Hard disk space
128 MB Graphics card
Windows 2K/ME/XP

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_II:_Total_War)

So, therefore perhaps you should search for these parts that each cost hundreds. If you live in U.S., check out the www.newegg.com or www.tigerdirect.com and if you live in Can, check out www.tigerdirect.ca and search for parts that makes your money happy.

p.s. and if you want to run the game more smoothier and extra performance, you might as well want to purchase the parts above the requirements.

I would have to agree with shatnerstoupe for the most part. His list is a good one, although I would upgrade the graphics card a little, and get an ATX motherboard, not an mATX. To compensate for that, I would downgrade the hard dive to a 160GB. Also shatnerstoupe forgot to add RAM to his system, hence the $100 dollar difference in price between his suggestion and mine:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 1.86Ghz $191.00
EVGA nForce4 SLI NVIDIA Socket 775 ATX Motherboard $109.99
Corsair TWINX 1024MB Dual-Channel DDR2 (two sticks) $106
EVGA GeForce 7600 GT 256MB GDDR3 $99.99 w/rebate $109.99 reg
Hitachi Deskstar 7K160 160GB $44.99
NEC ND3550 DVD+- Burner $29.99
Coolmax CX1-400B 400-Watt Power Supply $29.99

Total $607
Prices taken from Tiger Direct, Rebate expires 01/31/07

My friend recently bought a PC similar to this, (except with a 2.13 Ghz Core 2 Duo E6400) and it is able to run M2TW at Medium graphics without any lag.